Two Things to Ponder this Holiday Weekend
After nearly two weeks with little or no news, the Paris Conference on Avian Flu has drawn to a close, and we are beginning to get some new information. Submitted for your consideration are two news articles, which appeared today.
WHO warns of more easily spreadable birdflu form
Fri Jun 30, 2006 4:34 PM BST
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA (Reuters) - The risk of bird flu mutating into an form more easily spread between people is still high and there could be an upswing in human infections at the end of the year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Friday.
In a report analysing more than 200 known bird flu cases, the United Nations agency identified three peaks in human infections since 2003, all concentrated during the winter and spring seasons in the northern hemisphere.
"If this pattern continues, an upsurge in cases could be anticipated starting in late 2006 or early 2007," the WHO said, adding that further analysis was needed.
"Moreover, the widespread distribution of the H5N1 virus in poultry and the continued exposure of humans suggest that the risk of virus evolving into a more transmissible agent in humans remains high," it said.
More at . . .
Bird flu vaccine '10 years away'
Friday, 30 June 2006,
BBC News
"Avian flu experts meeting in Paris have been told that a viable vaccine against the human form of the disease could take 10 years to develop.
Dr David Fedson, a retired professor of medicine, told the conference that there were well-documented problems with the H5N1 virus when it came to making a vaccine.
Scientists normally grow such a vaccine from an inert form of a virus, using chicken eggs as their favourite growing medium. According to Dr Fedson, who also worked for a number of years in the vaccine manufacturing industry, the vaccine produced from H5N1 was proving particularly difficult to grow up.
It was also proving ineffective at stimulating an immune response that would give a person a good defence against bird flu.
He told BBC News: "Right now, worldwide, we can produce 300 million doses of seasonal flu vaccine, but it turns out that the H5N1 vaccine is so poorly immunogenic and replicates so poorly that... we could immunise globally, with six months of production, about 100 million people.
"From a public health point of view this is catastrophic," the former professor of medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, US, said.
More at . . .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5132910.stm
The upshot of these two articles is that the threat continues to grow, and hopes for a vaccine within `6 months’, as has been widely reported, are vastly overstated.
A refreshing bit of honesty finally beginning to emerge from our officials.
One has to wonder, tho, why now?
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